WIRED Magazine opens the second Ray Kappe-designed, LEED-certified LivingHome.

Source: residential architect online
Publication date: 2007-11-07

By Stephani L. Miller

To some—the people for whom WIRED Magazine exists—'wired' is a lifestyle. With a <i>raison d'etre</i> of exploring new and future innovations and technologies, it's not so surprising that WIRED chose to create a fully-wired house to appeal to its technology-loving readers. The magazine went a step further and had it built 'green' to appeal to a growing interest in sustainable and green building technologies.

Dubbed the WIRED LivingHome, the project illustrates how to integrate and balance technology, luxury, and design with sustainable living and innovative construction practices. The 4,057-square-foot modular house, located in Los Angeles, was created in partnership with green prefab builder LivingHomes and celebrated architect Ray Kappe, FAIA. It is only the second LivingHome that has been built, and Kappe designed both.

His involvement with LivingHomes is a few years old. Long a devotee of prefab house design, Kappe met LivingHomes' founder, tech industry veteran Steve Glenn, at the auction of a partially prefabricated custom house Kappe had designed. Naturally, the two talked about prefab houses, and after visiting Kappe's 50-year retrospective exhibit at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles, Glenn engaged him to design plans for his start-up prefab design/build company, LivingHomes.

To date Kappe has designed four LivingHome plans. The first of his designs to be built, completed in 2006 and now occupied by Glenn, achieved the first residential LEED Platinum certification in the U.S. (Visit www.architectmagazine.com and www.residentialarchitect.com to read about Kappe's Z6 house.)

Kappe's warm modernism suits Glenn's vision for LivingHomes, which keeps to a modern aesthetic overall. Glenn says he appreciates that Kappe does not dress up his chosen materials and that he does not use any material for form's sake alone.

All of his LivingHome designs start out with a minimum LEED Silver certification goal, but upgrading for higher certification levels merely requires incorporating additional LEED-approved materials and systems. "It's really a matter of how much somebody wants to spend for added elements that would give you LEED points," Kappe says.

The five-bedroom WIRED LivingHome is built to meet LEED Gold certification requirements, with energy conserving features estimated to make it 36 percent more efficient than a comparable conventionally-built residence. A variety of high-efficiency materials and systems, including tankless water heaters, LED lighting, forced-air radiant heating and cooling, and soy-based spray foam insulation, reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. The house's 4-kilowatt solar power system will supply at least 50 percent of its energy demand.

Unlike most of Kappe's other LivingHome plans that are designed for replication with little customization, the WIRED house was designed specifically to accommodate the magazine's preferences and the sloping site it occupiues. Its modern, open interiors were created from 11 steel-framed modules, which were shipped to the construction site and assembled to about 80 percent completion over the course of three days early in September 2007. Finish work continued through October, and included installation of automation technology to control lighting, climate, security, and entertainment systems, and lawn irrigation.

Prefab house design and construction has certain benefits over site-built construction, according to Kappe, most particularly reduced construction time and lower costs (or at least the potential for lower costs if produced in multiples; the WIRED LivingHome is priced at about $300 per square foot). The building process also has its difficulties, such as limitations imposed by the size of truck beds used to transport prefabricated modules and by roadway height restrictions. Also, the fabrication of modules can present difficulties, depending on the design of the house.

For Kappe and LivingHomes, "the major constraint is the fact that we have to use fabricators that do mostly modular schools, and we have to work somewhat within their systems," Kappe says.

Early in October, the WIRED LivingHome was completed and opened for public tours and events. It will remain open every weekend through November 18, 2007, after which it will be placed on the market for sale at a list price of $4 million. A percentage of the proceeds from tour ticket sales will be donated to national environmental organization Global Green USA and sustainable home and community developer Enterprise Community Partners.

To view time lapse videos of the house's assembly, visit www.wired.com/promo/wiredlivinghome/multimedia.html.